1. The digital image is cleaner, faster, more comfortable, more economical and technically has surpassed the film but with the digital age has lost quality, romance and content in images.
2. The impact of social networks in photojournalism is huge in a good and in a bad sense .Thanks to social networks your work can reach thousands of people, agencies, newspapers and media with a single click, something unthinkable a few years ago. The problem is when misuse of your work is done and people try to take advantage and seize your photos by face (an usual Spanish behavior).
3. We must educate, teach, manage and observe an image and a job through social networks where you expose, you inform and teach your photos both media, journalists and citizens, agencies, newspapers etc .. and especially to those who believe they are photographers for the simple fact of having a digital camera or iphone.
4. I think that big agencies are very closed circles and like in the movies, working on a film is very difficult even if you are very good at since directors and producers usually always count on the same team for all productions. Working for a new or small agency gives you the possibility to publish your photographs, it is true, but they take advantage of that and it is not paid. I have freelance colleagues who have given up because it does not reach them or to have a beer with their girlfriend on Saturday, if the girl has waited to Saturday. You may post but it is hard especially for young photojournalists.
5. I have already been three cases of theft of my photographs through the network and my blog. The first with an Argentine newspaper (I’m still waiting for reply to the e-mail I sent them) the second with a Spanish medium, which apologized and I paid the photo, the third photo was stolen by a Moroccan daily, which removed the photo and did not paid me. I insist that we must educate, teach, manage and enforce a picture and your work through social networks.
6. In the next five years will be less professional photojournalists, but be the effort will pay off in the end. I have great confidence in the new collective of photographers who are being set apart from the big agencies and media. But reading other colleagues who know a lot more than this, the outlook is not very promising.
7. It should be possible to make a living from photojournalism but it is only by fellowship and good jobs and always exposing those who want to make business with this profession.
8. I believe that mobile photography is a good complement for specific situations and a good tool for citizen journalists. I do not think it’s a threat to photojournalism, as they are different things.
9. I do not believe that doing things more quickly improves quality, people are beginning to think that video is a complement of photography. There are tools and the important thing is to tell a good story and get the money to tell the next story.
10. Social networks have been instrumental in the 15 M, the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. These in turn have created citizen journalists willing to report through the tools they handle this situations of injustice and give voice to those who do not have. The figure of the citizen journalist I think that is one of the great achievements of these movements and I do not think they are a problem for the photojournalist, quite the contrary.
Juan Carlos Lucas
Fernando de la vega ( VEGAFER )
Yo como 4 generacion de fotografos entre los que hubo reconocidos fotografos de prensa siempre he recalcado que lo que no puede ser es que hoy en dia una persona x coja una camara y por el mero hecho de saber apretar un boton y tener buenos contactos en empresas de prensa o …. pueda llegar a ser , sin tener en muchos casos ni idea de lo que es y fue la fotografia, un FOTOPERIODISTA y conozco casos que avalan lo que estoy diciendo asi como tampoco me parece logico que por otros motivos puedan del mismo modo montar un establecimiento fotograficoy ser llamado por eso FOTOGRAFO pero eso no gusta hoy aun cuando hay mas formas de prepararse que ayer y antes, por lo menos en mi familia se formaban antes de ejercer y ahora en muchos casos se forman despues y ejerciendo .